Multi-channel wireless networks represent a direction that most future 4G state-of-the-art wireless communication standards evolve towards, including IEEE 802.16 Wi-MAX and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE). In both Wi-MAX and LTE, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is used at the physical layer. OFDMA uses a large number of orthogonal subcarriers to maximize spectral efficiency, and assigns different subsets to different users to achieve multiple accesses. It is common knowledge that errors are inherently present in unreliable wireless channels. The important challenge in designing error control protocols in the MAC or physical layer is to effectively maximize achievable throughput in various transmission scenarios in wireless networks even when unpredictable and time-varying errors exist.
Multi-hop relay network is one of promising communication methods on wireless networks. Multi-hop relay network provides enhanced throughput performance and coverage extension. Consumer electronic devices (e.g., cell phones, televisions, set-top boxes, washing machines, refrigerators, etc) are getting more and more networked each other. Multi-hop relay wireless network can be a proper type of communication scheme for networking consumer electronic devices due to its low implementation cost and easy configuration. However, wireless multi-hop relay communication suffers from wireless channel impairment.